Secret emails from the NFL The regular season came to an end. My Chargers get the three seed in spite of Norv Turner's coaching. The GM who masterminded last year's coaching fiasco, A.J. Smith, got a freaking extension.

Words fail me.

A few people didn't receive Bizarro-world consideration from their bosses. Here's what the emails looked like on Bloody Monday, the day after the end of the season.

From: Big Tuna
To: RMueller@dolphins.com
Subject: Your job

Randy Mueller,
You drafted Ginn and Beck instead of Brady Quinn. The team finished 1-15. Bullethead wanted to take a contract out on you with one of these Jamaican drug gangs, but I think I talked him into just letting me fire you.

When security comes to escort you out, check for dreadlocks anyway. Chromedome might have changed his mind.

Bill

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From: Steve Biscotti
To: Brian Billick
Subject: You don't know QBs

I am so glad the season is over so I don't have to break my customary promise not to talk to the media during the year. Brian, you don't know quarterbacks, you can't run an offense, and the team hates your guts. Get the hell out and be glad I don't take Ray Lewis up on his offer to have a couple of his friends meet you in the parking lot to discuss cutlery with you. Out OUT OUT!!! I've got a press conference in five minutes.

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From: Teflon GM (mmillen@detroitlions.com)
To: Mike Martz (Ogenius@detroitlions.com)
Subject: See ya fall guy

Yeah, I know it would make more sense for Mr. Ford to have me dropped into the lake wearing nothing but a Ford pickup, but guess what? I get yet another free pass on a failed Lions season. Again.
Hahahahahaha. Take your kid with you, bitch. You're fired. I'm not.

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From: Carl Peterson (gm@kcchiefs.com)
To: KC Chiefs fans
Subject: me and Herm ain't leaving

Never underestimate the power of discreet photographs when it comes to dealing with ownership. So the Chiefs had their worst season since Jimmy Carter was in office. We fired some of the coaching staff, but me and Herm, we play to win the game, and the game is "keep our fat paychecks." Don't forget, season ticket prices go up next week.

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Tuna almost missed someone From inside the mind of the Big Tuna, Bill Parcells, about 24 hours ago...

Dammit, something's bothering me. Tossed Mueller out, that was the big item in my day planner. Thank god for those Stephen Covey books, I wouldn't be able to remember a single birthday if I hadn't bought those, had someone read them, and got them to pick up a planner and fill all that stuff in for me.

Birthday...did I forget someone's...no, that's not it. Crap.

Hey, Bullethead, how ya doin'? Thanks for keeping the team. You should have seen the look on Blank's face when I told him to forget about the job he was offering. What a rube. Played him like a violin. Sure made you add a zero to the contract though, didn't I?

Hahaha. Dammit. What am I forgetting? The horses, no, that's all good, they're being brought down from Sarasota to Ocala. I should have done that years ago. Cripes, upstate New York in winter, are you kidding me?

Hey, Ricky Williams, how ya doin'? No problem, glad we could hang on to you, fragile bitch that you are now thanks to the dope and the yoga. If I could move your ass for a seventh round pick I'd do it in the time it takes me to fart the theme to Spongebob.

Farting? No, did that out by the secretaries. Got to let them know where they stand. In my case, upwind. Hahaha.

Hey Cam, how's it go....hey, yeah, let's talk for two seconds. You're fired. Ok, one second.

No. That wasn't it. Ah, forget about it, I'm going to flip through the cheerleader calendar in the executive bathroom again.

Cop-punching anchor fired in Philly Alycia Lane had an awesome run in 2007. The anchor for Philly's KYW-TV sent her friend, NFL Network's Rich Eisen, some rocking bikini shots over email. Pity that Rich's wife, Suzy Shuster, found them first; you might say she broke up that pass play.

Then, Alycia decked a female cop in Manhattan in December. Emmy Award winner or not, the station decided it was time for Alycia to hit the streets, sans camera crew or news van...

In a statement, CBS 3 President and GM Michael Colleran said, "We have concluded that it would be impossible for Alycia to continue to report the news as she, herself, has become the focus of so many news stories."

I think she should apply for a job at the NFL Network. Her old friend Rich should be able to put in a good word for her - the word being HAWT.

Starbucks decaffeinates CEO Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. That's how the song goes at Starbucks, a jarring counterpoint to the usual new-agey stuff dripping out of the speakers.

Mr. Starbucks himself, Howard Schultz, is back as head barista and CEO, tossing out Jim Donald with the day's coffee grounds.

The change included this blinding flash of the obvious...

In an infamous leaked memo last year, Schultz lamented that the company's aggressive growth had led to "a watering down of the Starbucks experience."

Yet Starbucks has stuck to its ambitious long-term goal of having 40,000 stores worldwide. Late last year, however it announced a slight scaling back of U.S. store openings, among other moves aimed at improving operations.

I guess this "slight scaling back" means the cappuccino machine and the barista who staked out a corner of the Futon Of Love at my place will be leaving soon. I hope she leaves some of those CDs behind.

Side job sidelines marriage This isn't a true firing story, but a guy wants a divorce from his wife, so I guess he's firing her in a way.

File this one under real life Pina Colada Song. Except it's from Poland, so they'd be drinking vodka, right?

Whatever. So what are you doing here?, the guy asked his wife...

A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town.

He didn't mind her making money on the side. On her back, well, that's a divorce after 14 years of being married. As to what he was doing there, I'm guessing he got asked that question in a loud voice several times.

Police chief beer thief fired in brief From watching The Simpsons, I always assumed cops could get a beer whenever they wanted. Just walk into Moe's and ask for one.

The world doesn't work that way. You're not in Kansas anymore, but Brian Hill, police chief for Ellsworth, Kansas, was. Then he got thirsty...

A small-town police chief has been fired after he was convicted of stealing beer from the fire department's refrigerator.

Hill was arrested Aug. 1 after a surveillance tape showed him taking the beer. He was convicted of misdemeanor theft on Dec. 26 and given probation. He had been suspended without pay pending an appeal of the conviction.

Beerman Brian should have known he'd be on video. You don't think firemen are going to come back from a call and not notice someone's tapped their stash? He's lucky the firemen didn't use the Jaws of Life on him to get back what he consumed.

Lauren Conrad totally not fired by Teen Vogue "The Hills" star was the subject of rumors about her magazine job. Both Lauren and Whitney Port had places with Teen Vogue, oh by the way a sponsor of "The Hills" on MTV.

Lauren and Whitney disappeared from the magazine, while one of their entourage said they've moved on from Teen Vogue.

That was enough to get people talking about something other than the writer strike in Hollywood. Did Lauren get like fired from the magazine? She said no way brah...

“No, no, it was a decision I made because I was kind of done,� she told PEOPLE on Friday at the opening of the Jimmy Choo Flagship store on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. “I’ve been doing it for about two years, so I’m kind of done.�

I get what she means, who wants to be stuck at the same job for two years? That must be as frightening as wearing the same do-me dress and pumps as another girl at the same party. "OHMIGAHD Whitney how could you?!?!?!?!"

In other firing news, the new CEO at Sprint wants to fire a few thousand more people from the company. In other 'other' news, there are still people using Sprint. Who knew?

Would Annie Lennox lie to you? Depends on who you ask. The old Eurythmics singer said she got sacked by Sony BMG...

Lennox, 53, said she was shocked at the way she was treated by the company which once hailed her as "one of the finest musical voices of the age". Advertisement

Soundgenerator.com quotes her as saying: "They totally ignored me. It was bizarre. It was a kick in the teeth. They didn't return my phone calls or emails for three weeks. I'm trying to find out what's behind it.

Sony BMG has about as good a reputation among music lovers as Bush has with liberal voters, but this time around they say it's not their doing that took Annie off the label...

"The quotes attributed to Annie's dissatisfaction with her label arose out of a trip in December to South Africa and have no relevance to the expiry of her contract," said a Sony BMG statement.

Sony BMG still wants to work with her, no doubt because her last CD hit number seven on the British charts. I have no idea why I'm bothering to keep looking into this, but Annie could be full of it since she was complaining that she didn't know whether or not she wanted to do another record deal about a week ago.

Can't trust anyone in the entertainment industry. I mean, think about it, K-Fed ended up being the sane one in the Britney relationship. Weird.

Oh look, EMI is going to fire a couple thousand people. They'll use the cost savings to find the next Coldplay. Great.

Canadian nuclear watchdog nuked Those wacky Northerners, eh? All bent out of shape because a 50 year old nuclear reactor used for making medical isotopes stayed closed down after maintenance in November because, get this, Linda Keen didn't think it was safe to turn it back on.

I for one am comforted that politicians north of the border can be as petty as our homegrown double talking self-interested ones...

If they held auditions on Parliament Hill for a hot-tempered bully and his thuggish sidekick, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn would be shoo-ins.

Nice. There's plenty of blame to go around throughout the Canadian government over their little nuclear problem too...

Neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives should have been surprised last month when the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the agency mandated to protect Canadians from radioactive leaks and spills, ordered the Chalk River reactor to remain closed until it had completed mandatory safety upgrades. They were supposed to have been done two years ago.

What's more, neither party can feign innocence about the chronic money and management problems that have plagued AECL. The auditor general has flagged health and safety concerns year after year. The nuclear safety commission has sounded the alarm repeatedly.

Fix the problem, no. Fix the blame on Linda? Oh yeah. She got fired because, the politicos say, keeping Chalk River offline endangered everyone who needed isotopes.

It sounds more like Linda tried to protect people from being exposed to a whole lot of isotopes. the politicians didn't exactly give her a glowing sendoff.

How not to proofread your work Another brief part of my day, spent drilling through the great big Intarweb to find you some sort of firing story that doesn't stem from something terrifying or inflammatory. Seriously, I've skipped blogging some stuff that would make you despair for the whole human race.

Sometimes I find something that's unintentionally funny. Take this reporter in Hawaii, phoning it in by cutting and pasting a list called Top 10 Ways to Get Fired.

Notice every item in the list is numbered 1? If you scroll down to number 8, I mean 1, I mean, ah never mind, you see "forget to double-check your figures." Does that include making sure your list is numbered right?

Hawaii. Too distracting. I can relate to the brain melt, but really, if you're going to borrow at least do it properly. Forget to double-check your figures much? It happens.

LA Times editor says no to cuts For those of you wondering if I'm going to whine about my Chargers LOSING A WINNABLE GAME at Foxboro against the Pats, the answer is no, mostly because Christmas Ape at Kissing Suzy Kolber already did a good job with that. If anyone knows how the league's leading rusher who was 90% healthy for the game touched the ball three times and never came back in can tell me what happened, please leave a comment.

Onward to the fired story of the day. Everyone's heard about how the newspapers are having their heads held in the toilet over costs these days. At the Times, James O'Shea took one for the newsroom when publisher David Hiller asked for $4 million big ones in budget cuts...

"We did not share a common vision for the future of the L.A. Times," O'Shea said.

"Think of it as the changes made at the start of a new presidential term," Hiller said. "In the context of these changes, Jim and I decided we no longer saw things the same way about how to take the company forward."

The Times is getting absolutely schooled because people don't want to wait for the morning paper that they don't have time to read anyway when they want the news. Horse and cart, meet the Ferrari.

Norv Turner calls for CYA option You had to know I could no more let news about Chargers+firings pass by me any more than John Pinette can skip a seventh trip to the buffet line.

Coach Norv entered full cover your ass mode, sending the classy James Lofton (yes, the Hall of Famer) out job hunting...

“I don't have any idea,� Lofton said when asked why he was fired. “I was stunned. He just said he was going in a different direction.�

Unless Norv is planning to announce Jerry Rice taking the job, I'm wondering which way that direction is going to go.

Norv also ditched running backs coach Matt Simon. Looks to me like Matt's being scapegoated for LaDanian Tomlinson's 90% ready = 2 carries and 1 catch Sunday performance.

Neither of those guys were doing the playcalling on Sunday. If Norv's not on the street collecting tin cans for the deposit money, especially after punting with nine to go in the game, down two scores, at the Pats' 36, I have to wonder if Chargers ownership is either clinically insane or completely blinded to his screwups.

Image courtesy of Deadspin

DC workers fired over porn at the office Maybe the nine people booted out of DC city government had a short walk to the unemployment office, unless getting fired for watching naughty people do naughtier things on the taxpayer's dollar falls under "gross misconduct."

It doesn't sound like the Naughty Nine happened upon a popup or two by accident while looking for ways to cut crime rates and improve city services, by what the Washington City Paper said...

One fired employee, according to figures released at the press conference, racked up 48,002 hits on allegedly pornographic sites during 2007. That works out to about 200 hits per business day. Besides the nine fired, 32 more were reprimanded in a more than a dozen other agencies, including the police department, the D.C. Public Schools, and the Executive Office of the Mayor.

Tangherlini said thresholds were determined as to how many hits warranted termination versus other forms of punishment. About 20,000 hits for the year was considered sufficient grounds for immediate firing, which represents about 100 hits per working day. “That seemed to be a logical cutoff,� he said. Anything over 20 hits a day, he says, represented “something that’s no longer possibly accidental� and required a lesser sanction.

Guess what the biggest surprise was? Not all the fired employees were guys, but the report doesn't say how many of each there were. Bummer. Here I thought the biggest scandal that could come out of DC this week would be if they hired Jim Fassel to coach the Redskins.

Harsh. Medical sweetleaf will get you fired It doesn't matter if you have some type of painful, debilitating illness that only backs down when you smoke medicinal marijuana. No one cares about your track record at work or what kind of agony you have to shut off mentally each day.

In California, if your sweetleaf prescription makes your pee cloudy during a work-mandated drug test, say goodbye to your job and your dignity...

The court majority upheld the firing of Gary Ross, an Air Force veteran whose doctor recommended he use marijuana for chronic back pain and whose disability qualified him for government benefits.

Ross, 45, was hired by Raging Wire Telecommunications Inc. in 2001 as an administrator. Before taking a required drug test, Ross provided a copy of his physician's recommendation for marijuana. The company fired him a week after he started the job because of his marijuana use.

Ganja Gary's lawyer wasn't surprised by the California Supreme Court decision, because of "political realities." Are those the same "political realities" that say federal funding of stem cell research is bad, and to hell with chronically ill people who probably aren't anyone the Bush Administration knows personally anyway? One more quote from the LA Times...

"The court is claiming that California voters intended to permit medical use of marijuana, but only if you're willing to be unemployed and on welfare," Mirken said. "That is ridiculous on its face, as well as cruel."

Welcome to War On Drugsville. Population: You.

Big bucks for fired Starbucks CEO Wherever Jim Donald goes next, he'll be able to afford an espresso. The ex-Starbucks CEO picked up a full-flavored severance package that included $1.25 million.

Not including the stock options. Make that a double espresso...

Those options are worth $9.52 million, based on Monday's closing stock price of $19.66. The deal, reached about two weeks after Donald was fired, gives him three months past his Jan. 7 firing date to exercise those options.

He needs the extra income. Java Jim only made $7.4 million in compensation last year. That was while the stock price swirled into the dregs, which made a bunch of Jimmy's other options worthless.

Can you say "fired" Mr. Rogers? Someone had it in for Gary Rogers (real name Roger Freden) in Wahpeton, North Dakota. Unfortunately for the old boy, he left himself open to the third rail of the workplace, also known as the sexual harassment accusation...

On Wednesday, Jan. 23, co-worker Therese Gast bumped her knee and came into the front office rubbing her knee. Rogers said he asked, "Are you alright?" then jokingly said, "Do you want me to rub it for you." Everyone laughed and took it as a joke, Rogers said.

However, someone anonymously reported the incident and that's what began an investigation. By Thursday afternoon, officials from Go Radio Broadcasting Inc., in Fargo were at KBMW interviewing everyone.

As Mr. Rogers put it, 40 years of work done in 20 seconds. But he said he'd felt like he had a target on his back for three years. The bosses claim there's more than one side to the story but won't talk about it.

This is the 21st Century. Making even the vaguest sexual comment will get you fired in a heartbeat. I don't care if a barely dressed Adriana Lima descends from the heavens to work next to you, you cannot make any reference to her appearance. A jealous co-worker will overhear it and you'll be searching for a job faster than you can say Simply Hired.

Giuliani and Edwards fired by voters Time for a rousing chorus of na na na na, hey hey, goodbye, for a couple of Presidential wanna-bes.

John Edwards finally realized no one knows or cares that he ran for Vice-President a few years ago...

"It's time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path," Edwards said. "We do not know who will take the final steps to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. What we do know is that our Democratic party will make history."

Just not with him. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani was busy getting schooled by McCain and Romney in Florida. America's Mayor won't be America's President...

The flesh and blood of Giuliani never seemed in sync with the mood of voters. He harped on Sept. 11and the fear of terrorism, even as polls showed that people were more concerned with the economy. He talked about victory in Iraq, even when the news from Baghdad moved off the front page.

It helps to talk about the stuff people think about every day, like getting forcibly serviced by the oil industry in an impolite way at the gas pump, seeing the price of groceries going up in every aisle while every big employer in the country sends all the middle class jobs to industrial parks in Mexico or China.

Oh yeah, then there's the whole healthcare issue, as in where's the single payer system? We can't afford that? How about dumping the Department of Hopeless Security and making the Defense Department handle that whole protecting America thing? Isn't that their job anyway?

Fire DHS and fund a healthcare system with it. Hell, at least provide some kind of catastrophic coverage for people who wake up one morning with Mr. Cancer in their bodies.

Yeah, good luck getting Barack and Hillary to stop sniping at each other long enough to deal with that inconvenient truth.

Alycia Lane to court, maybe WWE too Rich Eisen's wife may want to tune in to WWE to keep an eye on Alycia Lane, the fired Philly news anchor who sent her husband plenty of hot bikini shots last year.

Alycia popped a cop in New York in December. That cost her the anchor gig at KYW-TV. Alycia has apologized unreservedly and taken full responsibility for her actions.

Yeah, I'm kidding. She's probably suing the station over the firing...

"It is our position that KYW 3 terminated Alycia Lane based on inaccurate press reports, innuendo, rumor and gossip," Rosen said. "What has been filed [today] is to determine the facts and circumstances surrounding the reasons why KYW 3 terminated Alycia, which appear to be contrary to the express terms of her contract. This procedure is to examine KYW 3's motives and actions for the conduct it expressed when it went public to terminate Alycia."

Wait, call off the lawyers, I can answer this one. Awesome Alycia got fired because she got in a fight with a cop and embarrassed the station. What do I win?

Image courtesy NY Daily News